Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate - Zac Johnson dot Com Let the Reign Begin

I’ve personally never had a “real job“, so I haven’t experienced the full effect of having to work for someone or being a number in a huge company. However, I have experienced seeing what happens to friends and family, working “for the man” and having to drag themselves to work everyday, and hating every minute of it. Nothing is worse than the thought of going into work every day with the one goal of clocking out at the end of the day and counting down how many more years you have till you can retire.

Below is a list of just a few “obvious” reasons why I feel it’s better to work for yourself, than making someone else rich. Yes, running a business isn’t for everyone… but if you are on the fence, maybe these points can help push you over.

1.) You Don’t Have to Take Crap from Anyone!
Who does your boss/co-workers think they are? Why are they so much better than you, that they think they can talk to you that way? This is probably the biggest reason for having your own business. No longer do you have to take crap from anyone. You are the boss and there is no one to talk down to you, or tell you what to do. If you do expand your business out and hire employees, remember how much you hated your boss and make sure not to do the same.

2.) Be More than Just a Number
How many people in your company know your name? If you have a suggestion, complaint or comment… will anyone listen? This one really depends on what your job is and who you work for, but as anyone can see, massive layoffs are happening everyday. In most of these huge layoffs, the employees were simply a number. Gone are they days when employees are given a stable position, are financially taken care of and receive the respect that they deserve.

3.) You Get What You Put Into It
In most cases, the more effort and work you put into something… the better the result. This can be stressed even more when it is your own business, because you want it to succeed that much more. Whether it’s money, growth or happiness… your efforts will always determine the end goal.

4.) More Free Time for Yourself and Your Family
While “not having to take crap from anyone” may seem like the best benefit to working for yourself, you’ll soon find that having more time for yourself and your family is what really matters. No longer will you have to wake up in the early morning and drag yourself through that horrible commute to and from work everyday… but instead you can focus on spending quality time on your business, while having more free time for more important things. Time is precious, and before you know it… it will pass you by.

5.) Your Success and Failures are Your Own
Just as much as your learn from your own successes, you will learn even more from your failures. Instead of making “the man” or “the company” successful, focus those efforts on your own business or personal goals. Instead of hitting goals for your employer and getting a bonus, focus your efforts towards new personal / business goals and increase your productivity and income every day.

6.) You Really Aren’t Making What You Think You Are!
The last point I will stress is one that may be more disturbing than anything else. Take your average salary, then work out the numbers and cost it takes you to maintain your job. How much are you spending daily on gas for your commute to and from work, your daily lunches, work attire and the most expensive of all… your time and stress levels. Work out these numbers and you may find you are “taking home” a lot less than you think… which makes it even easier for you to over take your current salary, working for yourself.

Of course, it’s easy for me to sit here and write a list of reasons why you shouldn’t be working for someone else. Not everyone has what it takes to run a business, or is ready to leave the financial stability of a job. I was fortunate enough to get started while I was in my early teens. I now have over 12 years of learning experience under my belt, making money online and loving what I do. My continuing goal with this blog is to help others accomplish their goals and be able to do the same.

Feel free to share some of your work hell stories below!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Last week I mentioned there was a new contest in the works between Market Leverage and a few other blogs, including this one. Instead of the usual prizes, Market Leverage has a few new ones up for grabs. One winner will be selected from this blog to win their choice of either an iPod Nano, or a Flip Mino HD. The top three winners (across all blog entries) selected will then receive an Amazon Kindle, $100 ML Rewards card, and $50 iTunes gift card. Winners will be selected on January 5, 2009.

What is the contest & how to enter?
Step 1: If you haven’t already, Join Market Leverage.
Step 2: Look at the offers with in the Market Leverage network, and do a short write up or video on how you would promote an offer.

The concept of the contest is to “share your secrets” of affiliate marketing, but I don’t expect anyone to do that. Instead, you can talk about your ideas or how you would promote an offer if you had more time, ad money or resources. The idea here is to possibly inspire others to act and make money on ideas that you simply wouldn’t have time or the resources for.

Why you should enter!
Honestly… the amount of contests and prizes that are constantly going around is massive. However, the actual amount of people that actually take the time to write something up and enter are minimal. You can easily walk away with one of these prizes with little time and effort on your part.

Here’s my quick sample entry:
Market Leverage has an offer for a “Hollywood Profiles Casting Calls“, which pays $25.00 per signup. Here’s my quick idea on how you could build up a site and profit from this offer consistently. First you should create a new web site or blog that is targeted towards amateur spoof videos on YouTube that show people re-enacting movies or celebrity impressions. Categorize the site so people can view videos based on different categories (look a likes, movie spoofs, acting). Enable the ability to have visitor leave comments or send the funny content to friends. You can then place links throughout the site that say, “Think you are Hollywood material?” or “Do you have the looks to be a celebrity?” and they would send the user to the offer.

This is a short and simple write up of the concept, but you get the idea. An even more in-depth established site with almost the same concept is Taltopia. This social network is built up of talented members looking for their 2 mins of fame. The idea and concept is there, but it’s a project I’m not interested in started… so I pass this idea off to you.

Winner Selection
Winners will be selected based on the quality and originallity of their submission. One winner will be selected from this blog post, by myself, and will have the choice between the iPod Nano or Flip Mino HD. Three other winners will be selected by Market Leverage from all submissions to the contest, from this blog and all participating blogs. (all prizes listed above)

The final details:
i. You can only use Market Leverage as an example network in your submission.
ii. Submit your entry by a text or video comment on this blog entry. For video submissions, please upload your video to Youtube, tag it with “Market Leverage Share Your Secret” and submit the link to your video in the comments section of this post.
iii. All entries must be submitted by 7pm on December 31, 2008.

- Join Market Leverage & Enter the Contest!

Popularity: 1% [?]

The desire and demand of celebrity tabloids and political gossip in the US is amazing. In a recent article form Adotas, Yahoo reported that the most clicked story of the year was Barack Obama’s presidential victory. On the flip side, Britney Spears and her massive comeback is nearly just as popular, not to mention that she has dominated (top 10 placement) the search market for seven of the past eight years. In addition to Britney Spears, other hot topics for the year were World Wrestling Entertainment, Miley Cyrus, RuneScape (game), Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan , Angelina Jolie, American Idol and Naruto (Japanese cartoon series).

Just from looking at the list, you can tell the big names in Hollywood are the majority of searches… but how can you make money from this? If you do a search on Google for any popular celebrity, you won’t find many (if any) affiliate sites… these keywords are usually too expensive and usually only big name advertisers appear. What’s an affiliate to do? Here are a few ideas how you can tap into the massive celebrity and top searches in the new year.

Create Celebrity Polls & Surveys
Yes, they are mostly annoying and all over the place… but that’s because they work. You can easily target any celebrity, movie or new topic through Google Content Network, and still get cheap clicks. The highly recommended PPC-Coach (which I am also a member of) spends the first month of your membership, walking you through how to setup your own celebrity polls and surveys, which then back out into CPA offers. In the end, you can pay cheap clicks for celebrity traffic, get them to your survey, then pass them on to a CPA offer.

(Tip: For best conversions, setup a survey/poll site that is targeted to one topic or celebrity, then try and find a backend cpa offer that is just as targeted. Rextopia has an offer that pays $1.00 and is a celebrity quiz. Create a poll that says “Is Britney Really Making a Comeback?”,… user clicks YES or NO, then is sent to the survey offer. The possibilities here are endless. More info on creating polls. )

Create a Blog
There are a ton of big celebrity gossip blogs out there. The idea of creating a celebrity gossip site may seem fun and easy, but to actually grab a viewer base from these bigger players may be harder than you expect. Try picking out ten or fifteen different celebrities, create a gossip blog for each of them, write content (or hire someone), then link up with a few other sites and soon enough you may find one of your celebrity blogs at the top of search results. Where’s the money to be made? Easy, with little effort you could place Google Adsense on your blog… or even try getting accepted into ValueClick Media or CasaleMedia for CPM ads. The best way to find what is working on celebrity blogs, is to do a Google search for “celebrity gossip”, and see what advertisements are working on those sites.

(Resource: Looking for a list of the top celebrity blogs? My friend Daniel over at DailyBlogTips, has compiled a running list of the Top 25 Celebrity Blogs.)

Celebrity Videos & Pictures
Taking the blog idea a bit further, you can create a celebrity video and pictures web site. Using the same advertising concept as the blog, you can place Google Adsense, CPM banners or CPA links through out the site. Grab your content from YouTube, or upload your own videos which then link the user back to your web site. In this scenario you are able to get free content from YouTube for your web site, while pulling over free traffic as well. (What content, and how you get it, is another story.)

There is a never ending supply of gossip and news that is funneling people to search engines every day. Just take a look at any top search queries and you will see a new celebrity or event every day. If you have a well ranked celebrity blog, targeted towards one of those new scandalous photos sent to a boyfriend, or just got out of rehab… get ready for some massive traffic and a few extra dollars. Cover all of your bases and this could be quite lucrative!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Less than a year ago, I wrote a post on how my blog readers have generated over $100,000 in earnings for themselves through Neverblue. Last week I was looking over my stats again, and saw that my referrals to NeverBlue, (through this blog), have now earned over half a million dollars for themselves! Not only is this very impressive and rewarding for myself and NeverBlue, but it also shows the continuing growth in affiliate marketing and the amount of people moving towards working for themselves online.

“Congratulations to Zac on reaching the $10k affiliate referral commission mark with Neverblue this month!! To date Zac has sent approximately 1400 affiliates to Neverblue and the number keeps increasing. It is awesome to see that Zac’s referral have made over $500,000 in revenue with us. We are excited to keep growing with the affiliates and help Super Affiliates like Zac reach the $1 MILLION milestone!”
Tina Chien
Business Development Manager

With the latest milestone of $500,000+ in earnings from my blog readers, this just solidifies my reasoning for starting a blog. With so many ebooks and sales programs out there, I created this blog with the intention to offer everything I could for free, and that is just paying off more and more every day. The emails and response I receive from readers is astounding. Living the life of an affiliate marketer is truly amazing, and I look forward to seeing more of you accomplish the dream of working for yourself and becoming financially independent!

Thank you to all of my readers.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Here we go again.. reports are swirling around that Microsoft is once again in talks with Yahoo for a potential deal. Now that Yang is out and Icahn has more control… I would not be surprised to see something happen this time.

I’ve always been a fan of Microsoft, and have been a long time share holder in both Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. With the massive holding Google has over internet search, it was inevitable for something to finally happen between these two companies.

So what does this mean for the future of search advertising? We all know that Yahoo and MSN deliver lower traffic than Google, but for the majority of us… usually better conversions! Yahoo and MSN marketing are not to be over looked, especially if they now potentially become one.

Where do you see this heading?

Popularity: 2% [?]